Introduction
Two “Unrelated” Questions
T
he present study is intended to explore two seemingly unrelated questions: Was ist Aufklärung? and What is Chinese
enlightenment?
The first question was posed by the editor of a Berlin
newspaper, Berlinische Monatsschrift, in 1784. It has since drawn
various responses from prominent thinkers such as Immanuel
Kant, Moses Mendelssohn, Max Weber, Max Horkheimer, and
others. This eighteenth-century question continued to capture the
imagination of twentieth-century philosophers. In fact, according to Michel Foucault, attempts to address the question and to
reappropriate Kant’s critique of enlightenment have constituted
“modern philosophy.”1 Perceiving a need to open up a debate
on “various interpretations of modernity,” Foucault proposed
to his German and American colleagues in the mid-1980s that
they hold a private conference to reexamine the question of
enlightenment and Kant’s response. Jürgen Habermas responded
to Foucault by commending him for initiating such a critically
important dialogue, and for his novel interpretation of Kant’s
position on enlightenment. For Habermas, Foucault reignited
the “critical impulse” of reason that was occasionally dimmed
by “German obscurity.”2 If we view Kant’s response to the question and Foucault’s to Kant and Habermas’s to Foucault as a
sequence or one coherent text, we can see clearly the emergence
1
© 2010 State University of New York Press, Albany
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What Is Enlightenment
of a thematic continuity in modern philosophy of knowledge
concerning human emancipation from tradition and dogma, as
well as a clear methodological departure endorsed by Kant and
further pursued by his postmodern respondents.
The second question, “What is Chinese enlightenment?”
emerged from the literature dedicated to the study of the
May Fourth cultural movement of 1919, the official signifier
of Chinese cultural, political, and intellectual modernity. The
inception of the May Fourth movement was marked by massive
student demonstrations in Beijing on May 4, 1919, protesting the
relinquishment of Chinese jurisdiction of Shandong Province to
Japan, previously under German jurisdiction since the Paris Peace
Conference at the end of World War I. The original student
movement soon spread to other major Chinese cities, triggering
large-scale protests in all walks of society. The nationwide revolt
against foreign imperialism and domestic political corruption
promoted a strong sense of modern nationalism, as well as a
cultural iconoclasm, directed toward the traditional values and
cultural institutions that were then held responsible for China’s
diplomatic failure and internal crisis and perceived to threaten
the survival of China as a new nation. Marking the awakening
of a new China and a turning point in modern Chinese cultural
and intellectual history, the May Fourth cultural movement thus
assumed the name “Chinese enlightenment.”3
The two questions entertained herein became related when
modern China was invited to answer the question “What is
enlightenment?” and a conceptual and dialogical relation between
modern China and Europe was established. Whereas enlightenment was characterized by Kant as Europe’s emergence from a
“self-imposed immaturity,” the May Fourth cultural movement
was defined as modern China’s emancipation from its own feudal past.4 The European enlightenment and the Chinese May
Fourth cultural movement appear to be two different historical
and intellectual events, yet, in an emerging context of globalization, cross-cultural encounter, and multidisciplinary study of
third-world histories and societies, the invitation for modern
China to address the question of enlightenment seems to be an
intellectually meaningful exercise. According to the estimation
© 2010 State University of New York Press, Albany
Introduction
3
of some historians of modern China, China’s answer to the
question “What is enlightenment” not only allows the nation
to articulate its own particular exegetical history of modernity,
but also enables modern Europe to reflect on its own “cultural
issues that are overlooked in the course of political revolution in
its modern history.”5 A mutually beneficial relationship between
European and Chinese modernity was thus anticipated.
However, the dialogue itself did not yield any anticipated
results. Almost at the outset, an important difference between
the two enlightenment events was identified that seems to disqualify modern China for the name of enlightenment. According to Vera Schwarcz, author of The Chinese Enlightenment, the
European Enlightenment evolved from a “philosophical debate”
in the relatively peaceful centuries prior to the French Revolution. Accordingly, Kant’s reflection on “What is enlightenment?”
correlates to his contemporaries’ quest for truth. Contrary to its
European counterpart, China’s enlightenment, though starting
out as a cultural and intellectual reform movement intended to
facilitate changes in the thinking of the Chinese people, was soon
interrupted by social and political revolution and thus became
politically signified. The political signification of an intellectual
and cultural event hence disqualified the Chinese May Fourth
movement from being defined as “enlightenment”; in fact, it was
“never quite synonymous” with it.6 Thus, the aforementioned
dialogue between modern China and Europe on the question
of enlightenment was prematurely closed.
The present study argues that the aborted conversation
was largely due to a double misreading of not only the question
“Was ist Aufklärung?” but also the question “What is Chinese
enlightenment?” In an attempt to rectify this double misreading,
the present study develops and outlines an alternative conceptual
framework for a cross-cultural exposition of the question “What
is enlightenment?” hence resuming the prematurely closed but
potentially productive conversation.
Chapter 1 provides a reading of Kant’s newspaper article
intended to answer the question “What is enlightenment?”
followed by a discussion of the comments of two of Kant’s
postmodern respondents, Foucault and Habermas. We demon-
© 2010 State University of New York Press, Albany
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What Is Enlightenment
strate that while defining enlightenment as “man’s emergence
from self-imposed immaturity,” Kant simultaneously requires
the maturity of a political culture that guarantees the public
use of reason for all citizens on all matters. The ambiguity of
how freedom to exercise critical reason can coexist with a welldisciplined army highlights a central paradox inherent in Kant’s
enlightenment thinking, which, according to some postmodern
interpreters, has promoted a freedom of hermeneutic interpretation. About two centuries later, both Foucault and Habermas
realized that Kant, in discussing what enlightenment was, had
actually introduced an “ontology of contemporary reality.” In
order to continue to pursue Kant’s line of inquiry incorporating
the temporal and spatial events of the present in addressing the
philosophical issues of enlightenment, Foucault introduced a literary modernity represented by Baudelaire’s fictional characters,
those who personally embrace the “heroic aspects of the present
moment.”7 Elsewhere, Foucault advocated a “boundary transgression” experience aimed at going beyond Kant’s dialectic of
“enlightenment and revolution” and “private and public culture.”
I analyze the ways in which Foucault ventured to gain access to
the other side of reason, the side of unreason and madness, to
map out the advent of enlightenment and modernity that had
excluded and silenced the voices of the latter. In his response
to Foucault, Habermas praised Foucault’s boundary transgression as a culturally significant event. However, he cautioned
that there was a philosophical danger lurking beneath such an
experiment of transgression. Foucault’s experiment had reduced
the enlightenment project and modernity to a mere network of
power in which a human subject becomes trapped in the various
disguises of the dual play of emancipation and enslavement. To
counter such a perceived philosophical danger, Habermas proposed an alternative route to return to the “original” Kant, hence
to the “unfinished” project of enlightenment. To accomplish
such an objective, Habermas suggested ways of transforming
enlightenment reason to an intersubjectivity or communicative
rationality represented by a sociolinguistic model, the ideal
speech situation. The latter is intended as both a hermeneutic
model for reaching a mutual understanding among interested
© 2010 State University of New York Press, Albany
Introduction
5
groups and a practical paradigm for living an enlightened life
in a given society. Reading Kant, Foucault, and Habermas in
sequence or as a coherent text, we can clearly see that for Kant
and his postmodern respondents, the reflection of the eighteenth
century’s enlightenment project was never intended to recover
and sustain a metaphysical presence in the name of philosophy,
nor was it to identify an epistemological certainty for articulating knowledge and representing truth as an independent reality
outside of everyday temporalities.
Chapter 2 questions the (mis)judgment concerning the
nature of incompleteness of Chinese May Fourth or Chinese
enlightenment. The misjudgment was largely due to a perceived
inherent incapability on the part of modern China to discriminate its cultural and intellectual discourse from the contemporary sociopolitical praxis. We argue that such a misjudgment is
based on assumptions that European enlightenment is purely
a theoretical discourse and that Kant’s response to “What is
enlightenment?” is the correlate to the quest for truth. Such
misassumptions betray an oversight of the important paradigm
shift initiated by Kant in his address on “What is enlightenment?” further pursued by his postmodern interpreters. That is,
among other things, the quest for enlightenment, understood as
humanity’s emergence from self-inflicted ignorance, necessarily
requires everyday temporality as a complementary space for
theoretical speculation. However based on these assumptions
and oversights, the May Fourth movement was required to
split into two mutually exclusive discourses and praxis or the
internal prerequisites of cultural enlightenment and the external
imperative of political salvation. Failure to do so would reduce
Chinese enlightenment to a counterstatement of reason or a
belated modernity. Consequently, modern China is left with no
choice but to convey its history of modernity to a philosophical discourse and a cooperative institution for elaborating the
conceptual framework and theoretical language of its European
counterpart. Yet, as we will demonstrate, modern China may
never be able to complete its modernization agenda, since the
intellectual horizons of modern Europe and its understanding of
enlightenment are constantly shifting, hence always preceding the
© 2010 State University of New York Press, Albany
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What Is Enlightenment
Chinese understanding of what enlightenment is and what it ought
to be. Separated by a time lag that not only signifies a temporal
passage but a displaced relation with a universal enlightenment,
modern China may never succeed in emerging from its feudal
past, as Kant’s definition of enlightenment required.
The theoretical interest underlines the second part of the
present study, comprised of chapters 3 and 4, which outlines a
new conceptual framework to reorient and resume cross-cultural
exposition of the questions of enlightenment and May Fourth.
Among other things, I propose that humanity’s emancipation
from the restrain of dogmas by striving for an ever higher level
of self-consciousness is by nature an ongoing process of selfunderstanding and self-interpretation. As such, enlightenment is
a continuing hermeneutic project that is not preoccupied with
a conceptual and practical “closure,” but constantly engages
the ever-changing context of the present, where the interest
of self-liberation is intimately intertwined with social, political,
and cultural discourses and praxis. The dialectical tensions of
hermeneutics and politics, inherent in multiple enlightenment
projects, do not require a higher synthesis to transcend or reach
a final resolution or victory. I argue, to a great extent, that
enlightenment events are indeed hermeneutic projects searching
for ways to sustain these dialectical tensions, since it is the latter
that have enabled a renewed self-understanding and self-growth
in the changing dynamic of everyday temporality.
Chapter 3 focuses on the May Fourth event of Hu Shi’s
attempt to institute a modern intellectual and political paradigm
through transforming and transcribing a classical Confucian
model of ritual enlightenment. I suggest that the way in which
Hu Shi sought to facilitate a new liberal and democratic enlightenment was through a hermeneutical engagement with classical
Confucian teaching of rites and virtues aiming at at a simultaneous
realization of individual growth and cultural enrichment, as well
as an ongoing commitment to the social and political progress
of the era. Thus, May Fourth enlightenment thinkers did not
break free from their Confucian predecessors, but continued to
appropriate the creative tension inherent in Confucian enlightenment traditions, tensions such as public and private culture,
© 2010 State University of New York Press, Albany
Introduction
7
social and political responsibility, and individual cultural and
intellectual growth, such that enlightenment is hermeneutical
and hermeneutics becomes politics.
Chapter 4 examines another instance of May Fourth revisionism, characterized by ways in which May Fourth historians
collaborated with political philosophers in transforming and
reinterpreting the classical canon of knowledge in the rapidly
changing sociopolitical context of the twentieth century. I investigate a critical historical reconstruction project, represented by
Gu Jiegang’s Critiques of Ancient Historiography (Gushi Bian), and
highlight a persistent concern that has informed both traditional
and May Fourth historical thinkers, that is, how history can be
effectively located in the contemporary sociopolitical context
in which it acquires meaning and signification. The attempt in
Chinese historiography to problematize history’s relation with
its unfolding process in present temporal and spatial dynamics
brings out interesting parallels in the postmodern historical mode
of thinking articulated by Foucault and his followers. For both
Confucian and Foucaultian historians, if contemporary political and institutional realities are necessary and complementary
space for the discursive formation of a historical statement of
“What is enlightenment?” historians must be writing history
for the present, or rather, writing the “history of the present.”
To conclude, as an important metaphor for humanity’s progress
and liberation, enlightenment must never exhaust its meaning
in a single historical realization: humanity’s self-understanding
is constantly renewing itself in relation to the ever-changing
context of the present.
© 2010 State University of New York Press, Albany